Glossary

Junior Primary - Writing

Mainstream students: Those students who come to school with SAE as a home language.

Middle Primary/Middle Schooling - Writing

clause: A group of words which form a grammatical unit and which contain a subject and a finite verb. A clause forms a sentence or part of a sentence and often functions as a noun, adjective or adverb. [See Richards, J.C., Platt, J. & Platt, H. (1992)]
environmental print: Signs and labels within the child's familiar environment, e.g. MacDonalds, STOP, labels on packets, tins and boxes. [See McKay, P., Sapuppo, M. and Hudson, C. (1994)]
ESL: English as Second Language
formulaic phrase: (or formulaic speech) A segment of language made up of several morphemes or words which are learned together and used as if they were a single item, e.g. How are you? No way. [See McKay, P., Sapuppo, M. and Hudson, C. (1994)]
HL: This represents the languages or dialects that the child speaks at home. This may be a traditional indigenous language, a Creole or a dialect of SAE, eg. Kala Kawaw Ya, Wik Mungkan, Torres Strait Creole, Aboriginal English. Note that many children are exposed to multi-lingual settings in their home environment.
literacy set: Concepts and awareness of print upon which literacy development can be based, e.g. confidence in use of oral language, understanding of basic conventions of print, knowledge of signs and labels, awareness of some of the basic elements of stories. [See McKay, P., Sapuppo, M. and Hudson, C. (1994)]
SAE: Standard Australian English
scaffolding: The temporary assistance that teachers provide for their students in order to assist them to complete a task or develop new understandings, so that they will later be able to complete tasks alone. [See Hammond, J. (ed.) (2001)]
shame: For Torres Strait Islanders, shame is 'a mixture of embarrassment and discomfort caused by one's own behaviour or that of someone for whom one is responsible.' [See Shnukal, A. (1996)]
speech variety: A term sometimes used instead of language, dialect, sociolect, pidgin, Creole, etc. because it is considered more neutral than such terms. It may also be used for different varieties of one language, e.g. American English, Australian English, Indian English. [See Richards, J.C., Platt, J. & Platt, H. (1992)]
structure: A sequence of linguistic units that are in a certain relationship to one another. [See Richards, J.C., Platt, J. & Platt, H. (1992)]
subordination: The relationship between a dependent and an independent grammatical structure. In the sentence: He sat down because he was tired, the clause he was tired is a subordinate clause joined to the main clause by means of the subordinating conjunction because. Subordination is one feature which contributes to sentence complexity. [See McKay, P., Sapuppo, M. and Hudson, C.(1994)]
syntax: The ways that words may be combined in groups up to the level of the sentence. [See Extract from LINC Glossary in McKay, P., Sapuppo, M. and Hudson, C. (1994)]
writing implements: e.g. pens, pencils, crayons, felt pens.
varieties of English: see 'speech variety'

References

Anstey, M. (2002) Literate Futures: Reading. Coorparoo: AccessEd, Education Queensland, Queensland Government.

Hammond, J. (ed.) (2001) Scaffolding. Teaching and Learning in Language and Literacy Education. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association

McKay, P., Sapuppo, M. and Hudson, C. The ESL Bandscales. In NLLIA ESL Development: Language and Literacy in Schools. (1994) Canberra: National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia.

Matthews, P.H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Richards, J.C., Platt, J. & Platt, H. (1992) Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Singapore: Longman Singapore Publishers Pty Ltd.

Shnukal, A. (1996) Language in Learning at Thursday Island High School, Australian Journal of Indigenous Education Vol.24, No.2. p.49

^ Top of page